Week 1 - Day 4

Leg Day (For Real This Time)

Today was it; actual leg day. My legs were just starting to feel better too! Oh well, no pain, no gain, right?

What’s funny is I was actually dreading this day because of how much my legs hurt still. However, when I got down to my workout room to look at what was on the schedule, they were…easy? Squats, step-ups, and glute bridges. That was it. No lunges with weights. No machine exercises. Nothing. Just those 3 simple exercises.

In my excitement of doing simple things today, I forgot my pre-workout stretches. Since today was also cardio day, I ran for 15 minutes, felt sick to my stomach afterwards (probably because those 3 “simple” exercises weren’t so simple after all), and forgot to do my post-workout stretches. Whoops.

This leads me to another confession (getting all of these out early feels good). I have a terrible memory. I have to use cones to know which set I’m currently on because I can’t remember.

In case you aren’t aware of the cone activity, let me explain it to you. At one point time, I can’t remember why, I bought these orange cones.

                               Orange cone of counting               

Now, what these cones provide for me is a way to count my sets. If I have 3 sets, I’ll set out 3 cones stacked on top of each other on one side of my mat. When I finish a set, I move a cone to the other side. Once all cones are moved, I know I’m done. Simple, right?

Well, I need something like that for my pre- and post-workout stretches. I asked my AI Life Coach and it came up with things such as set alarms, habit stacking, following a routine, and using an app. Yea, those aren’t going to help me. It did, however, suggest “visual cues”. Specifically, it mentioned Post-It notes, but I didn’t want to use those. So I came up with my card display.

                                    Stock cards of telling               

Very similar to my cones, I will set these somewhere I can see them, probably on my desk. Every time I go to my computer to see what my next exercise is, I will see what card is up and do that activity. When I’m done, I’ll knock it down. In theory, it should work. I’ll let you know tomorrow.

Prepping Meals the Night Before

Breakfast

This breakfast I had to think of yesterday. When I was first given my meals for the week, one of the breakfast options caught my attention; Overnight oats. Now of course I’ve seen the ads online about the company selling Overnight Oats My cousin actually tried some, but I’ve never had any before, so I was curious.

It called for the concoction to be placed in a mason jar, but I thought that would be too hillbilly for me to do. So, I used one of those shaker cups instead. I still used my frozen berry blend and chia seeds. The recipe called for something called “rolled” oats. When I went shopping on Sunday, I couldn’t find anything that said “rolled” oats. I went with regular oats and hoped for the best.

And it was delicious. I was very surprised. It needed warmed up (cold oats aren’t very good in my opinion), but that was an easy fix. I would probably go for a different flavor combination since berries really aren’t my favorite thing to eat, but I would definitely try this gain.

Morning Snack

Rice cake for my morning snack. My tried and true, my ride or die, my favorite thing to look forward to every day. Love these things.

Lunch

For lunch I tried something new. I decided to make a quinoa bowl. I had never heard of quinoa before, had not a single clue what it was or what to expect. I had the hardest time finding it in the store on Sunday because I didn’t even really know where to look or what it looked like. When I found it, they looked like little white seeds in the grain section (in case anyone also wants to try it).

The recipe said to make the quinoa as stated on the package. Package said to boil 2 cups of water and add 1 cup of quinoa after rinsing it off thoroughly. Recipe called for 1 cup of cooked quinoa.

If you know, you know.

If you don’t know, like I didn’t, quinoa basically TRIPLES in size. My 1 cup of raw quinoa turned into a 3 cup mess because my sauce pan was too small. I had these weird half translucent beads everywhere on my stovetop because it boiled over. What a mess.

Anyways, quinoa is apparently part of wheat. It tasted like plain pasta so I can see how it could be made into something delicious. Unfortunately, what I did wasn’t very good. The recipe said to add roasted vegetables and a lemon tahini sauce. I was on the clock and didn’t have time to chop and roast vegetables, so I went with my frozen pepper and onion blend. I also didn’t have any tahini so I asked my AI Life Coach what I could replace it with.

If you thought “Greek yogurt”, you win!

I swear, I didn’t know how much Greek yogurt can be used in recipes. It basically can replace anything that’s supposed to add a creamy texture to it, up to and including avocados. I know that fact because I looked it up.

Back to the recipe, I made my quinoa bowl with all of my substituted ingredients, and it was…meh. Not my favorite thing in the world, but it wasn’t inedible either. It needed some kind of spice or herb to it, but I didn’t have time to look it up. I ate it but wasn’t particularly pleased about the experience.

Evening Snack

Evening snack? What evening snack? Oh, the one I was supposed to eat at 3:00 pm and it’s now 5:00 pm? Whoops. Missed that one. I said it was going to happen one day because of my work schedule, but I didn’t expect it to happen LITERALLY THE NEXT DAY.

Oh well.

Dinner

Work was stressful and I didn’t feel like cooking, so I ate the last of the baked chicken. It was still good. Will have to add that recipe (minus some oregano) to the book.